


Family

by TeaRoses



Category: Trigun
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-04
Updated: 2010-03-04
Packaged: 2017-10-07 17:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaRoses/pseuds/TeaRoses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Possibly the only Nebraska Family fic out there.  Or at least the only serious one.  Done for the trigun_shots community on LJ for the prompt "An Experiment Gone Wrong."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family

He named him Gofsef because he had heard the name meant "more." And if there was one thing he intended for his son to be, it was that he would be more than anyone else: stronger, more intimidating, more deadly. When the boy was still small, he started some of the same modifications his wife had: steam-power in the head, artificial musculature, stretching and adding bones, and for Gofsef only a clever detachable hand that could level a building. His son would not only be strong but huge, a giant to destroy whatever was in their way.

When Gofsef turned fifteen and had reached his full size, Pa Nebraska prepared the final version of the hand and the head. But his daughter pointed out what her father had denied for so long: There was something not right about Gofsef. Like his mother, he could not speak, and his father had tried to ascribe all his problems to that. But it was not so, the changes had damaged his brain, and he was hesitant in action and slow in thought. He would be useful only with his father's constant help and direction.

A more normal person would have felt guilt, and stopped trying to meld human and machine. But Pa Nebraska did neither. He went on to modify other children, his human cannonballs. However he took care not to get attached to them, and left them to his daughter and his wife to raise. They told him the other boys had dealt with the surgery much better, but Pa claimed not to care. There were enemies to defeat and crimes to commit, so he went on using his failed experiment as a weapon, and channeling his fatherly love into anger at everyone who opposed him.

But kept a soft spot in his heart for poor Gofsef. Now and then he remembered what he had been long ago: a sleeping infant, a babbling toddler, a small child made only of flesh that Pa cradled in his arms. A tear would come to his eye at times, but he wiped it away and moved on.


End file.
